Thats my opinion
Thats my opinion's JournalIs there a place for religion in public life or in the political arena?
No Constitutional issue has generated more legal tangles than the words in the
First Amendment; “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The language states that there can be no governmentally authorized religion, but no restriction on its practice. The purposeful ambiguity has allowed courts to read into the words about anything society was feeling at the moment. Nevertheless, even given the fluidity of the language, there are boundaries. On one hand, it is clear that the United States has no official church. We are not legally a Christian nation. Those who want an authorized religion are always defeated in court. On the other hand those who hold that religion should play no public part in national affairs come off no better. Ambiguity seems to rule. Under God is in the Pledge of Allegiance. In God we trust is on our coins. We have chaplains in our armed forces, and even in Congress. I believe the courts have given a wink and a nod to these violations. On the other hand, officially sanctioned religious prayers in classrooms are forbidden.
Here is a contemporary question: what is the legal role of religion in political campaigns? Does a candidate have the Constitutional right to insert his or her private religious convictions into public pronouncements or campaign literature? If Rick Santorum publically says he wants the birth control issue to be part of his platform, that affirmation probably falls under the “free exercise” language. However, if the Catholic Bishops declare that the United States must bow to a religious edict and Congress goes along, that is clearly over the line.
Among a small group of Americans one hears the cry, “keep religion out of politics.” While for some that feels right, we still have the balance found in the First Amendment. Many of us on the political left fume when activists on the political right want to include, for instance, creationism in science classrooms. My guess is this political battle is to be fought at the local or state level. It is a matter for the people in a particular jurisdiction to decide. On the other hand, there are those who decry the incursion of such issues into the national debate. Would they have tried to keep Martin Luther King Jr. out of the civil rights struggle because he was an avowed Christian who believed that what he stood for flowed from his faith? Had his voice been eliminated on that basis, we would never have had a voting rights law. King’s effort clearly falls on the side of free exercise, but so does the argument of the creationists. The Constitution does not guarantee freedom from religion, but freedom of religion. Liberal churches these days are committed to certain social policies, and work to see that they are part off the national consensus. For example: the end of the death penalty. The full rights of gay and lesbian persons to marry. The end of torture as a national policy. Health care for all. A just immigration agenda. Strengthening the social safety net. An end to world hunger---and much more. Promoting these vital matters clearly fall on the free exercise side of the First Amendment.
There are nations which prohibit religious values from having any role in public affairs, but their governing documents are not like ours. For those who believe that religious convictions should have no role in national life, their only option is to seek a change in the Constitution. As of now, the free exercise clause does not prohibit religious groups from speaking in the public square.
Sectarianism has no valid place in our official governmental life. The Ten Commandments are not to be placed in our schoolrooms or on public property. Religious symbols, such as the cross, have no place on national shrines. Congress is prohibited from saying that any one religion or religion in general is the basis for any part of our official national life. Nevertheless, in The United States religion never has been simply a private affair. In the meantime many of us will grimace when some types of religious activities get intruded into our political campaigns, as politicians stand reverently while being prayed for by a religious authority. Although the Constitutional line may not be crossed in such pious displays, what is lost is any integrity religious people have left.
The religious side of Occupy
As Occupy has continued to mature, its religious component has become more direct, up front and articulate.
People from a large variety of faith communities met at the Judson Memorial Church in New York in December and drafted a religious statement in support of Occupy called, Waking Force.
Subsequently a group of religious leaders from around the nation met last week at an ecumenical Seminary in Berkeley, affirmed the statement and developed an additional action agenda. The statement is described below.
As a people from various faith and spiritual communities, we find the OWS Movement a Waking Force that has dispelled despair, depression and denial about the gross injustices of society and the suffering of our people.
We stand together for engaged, transforming action that says:
• Yes to open democracy, fair justice systems, and public conversation that respect every person’s voice in determining the quality and future of our lives.
• Yes to just economic policies that create greater equality and that enable all to share responsibility for the common good.
• Yes to a generous society that provides high quality education, affordable housing, adequate income, meaningful work, and universal access to health care.
• Yes to strong environmental policies that guard the well being of the planet we all share.
• Yes to peace among nations based on human rights, compassion for all who suffer, religious liberty, mutual respect and civil liberties.
• Yes to immigration policies based on hospitality and generosity and respect for the vast diversity of human beings by race, sexuality, class, nationality, ethnicity, physical ability, occupation, gender and age.
• Yes to the transforming, creative works of human imagination and freedom that enliven our lives together and bring us life giving joy and laughter.
We are part of this very new movement because these values have been betrayed by an economic and political elite who have proven indifferent to the common good and their moral obligations to the public welfare.
Their betrayal cannot go unchallenged. We will continue to apply our Waking Force
to grow this movement and it effectiveness. The well being of the world’s people and the delicate balance of earthly life hang in this balance.
As a believer I am deeply offended
by the prosperity gospel. In this morning's the LA there is an article about a legal battle inside the Trinity Broadcasting Network. The founders--the Crouches--continually beg for money which gullible people send in by the millions----mulch of which Crouch and his wife take for themselves. They buy a $100,000 van for their dogs, luxurious houses all over the country and much more. It is a blaspheme and a scandal. I wish the law could get them.
My temperature goes up a mile about this sort of thing---which is not limited to TBN.
It makes what many others of us do that much more difficult.
Accuse me of the NTS perspective--and I will plead guilty as charged. Religious fraud is still fraud, and is disgusting..
The scientific meta-narrative
Many of the questions I have been asked to address deal with the difference between the thought behind science and the thought behind religion. The following is an attempt to look at the way we come at this matter from different perspectives. To put down science because it does not use the methodology of religion is fallacious. So is the converse. Religion does not use the methodology of science. But that does not disallow it.
One of the compelling lessons to be learned from the post-modernists is that no system or perspective, which claims to explain everything, is legitimate. These “meta-narratives” always leave segments of society believing that they have all the answers to everything. Historically, when religion in general or a single religion in particular, assumes total control of knowledge and authority, civilization not only grinds to a halt but also regresses. Meta-narratives are always incomplete and flawed. Religion, however, is not the only culprit. The common meta-narrative of our age is “scientism.” The laws of nature as we know them are not only incomplete, but are also circumscribed by conjecture. However, to assume that science or the scientific method is the final reality eliminating from all discourse any other value, purpose or way to understand life, is the era’s basic meta-narrative. And that is where our culture currently finds itself.
How did we come to this societal conclusion? To understand the problem we need to go back to the 17th century and Rene Descartes. While still a dedicated Christian, with a profound faith in God, Descartes began to see that the control of life by the religious establishment and its thought processes stifled all other ways to understand reality. He studied mathematics, physics and what he called “the great book of the world.” Eventually he concluded that the only reality was the processes of the mind—indeed the mind was the totality of both meaning and being. He concluded that he was no more and no less than what he thought. “I think, therefore I am.” Only those things the human mind can deduce from an observation of the natural world have any legitimacy. Thus the burgeoning discipline called science became “scientism”—the meta-narrative that dominates us today. While Descartes contribution to the intellectual world has rarely been excelled, the most direct result of his work has been the trading of one meta-narrative for another. Now, “science is my shepherd, I shall not want.” So rationality means, ‘scientific absolutism,’ and to say that some person or discipline is not rational and therefore cannot legitimately enter any intellectual conversation, is to buy the absolute nature of the Cartesian model.
While religion must incorporate the Cartesian synthesis, it does not assert that it is the only reality. We are not just what our minds produce. There is purpose, beauty, meaning, values and the mystery that exist beyond scientism. These realities are not opposed to the scientific model, but only stand along side it as a way to understand the meaning of life.
One of Descartes’ most profound observations was that everything that cannot be proved—rationally and scientifically—should be doubted. When someone says, “I have facts and all you have is faith,” he/she has taken Descartes' doubt model as the whole truth. This is compared to the Socratic model which says that doubt is always the beginning of wisdom. In education one proceeds either from the deductive reasoning of Descartes or the inductive reasoning of the Greeks. The point is that each must exist beside the other as partners. Neither can be a meta-narrative, which explains everything. Faith in that which cannot be rationally proved, has its own legitimacy.
The other great challenge to the Cartesian rationalism is empiricism, (John Locke as the prime example) which holds that all knowledge is derived from experience. One believes in love, for instance, not because of a rational perspective, but because one has experienced it. God is not an entity to be proved, but an experience to be delighted in. Compassion is not good because it bends to the laws of nature but because one simply had been the object of compassion offered by another. Science also relies on an empirical analysis, but is not totally captured by it. There is room for those things which are never rationally produced even by the greatest minds. Beauty is not a provable reality. Beauty is validated only by experience.
Perhaps our culture is so totally caught up in the Cartesian synthesis we find it impossible to realize that this just appears to be our total reality. It is so much part of us we cannot even realize its ubiquitous reality. Ask a fish what water is, and it will say, “What’s water?”
Here is a newpaper column of mine which will be published next week.
WHAT IF A GOVERNMENT POLICY IS RELIGIOUSLY ABHORRENT?
The Administration generated a firestorm when it ruled that any organization using government funds as part of a health insurance program, is required to include contraception for all employees covered by the plan. When Catholic groups objected, the President backed off and decided that the insurance company, not the religious institution, must supply the contraception. This modification did not silence the cries that now mainly came from Republicans. The charge was that requiring a religious institution to pay for—no matter how indirectly—something that was contrary to its dogma, was a violation of religious freedom. The fact that no one—NO ONE—was required to use any form of birth control was beside the point. Even if the insurance companies were asked to provide the contraception without charge, it was held that the regulation still impinged on the religious sensitivities of institutions that contracted for the insurance coverage. So the issue was framed as religious freedom, not contraception.
When this matter came up in a recent discussion, a friend of mine suggested—with his tongue in his cheek—that maybe the government should not enforce any law or regulation that was abhorrent to someone’s religious commitment. My friend, being a pacifist, said, “Let’s start with war. Killing people in war is contrary to my religion, so why should I have to pay for what we are doing in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere? Millions of religious people and institutions believe war is contrary to their faith.”
During the war against Vietnam I took that notion seriously and every quarter when I sent in my taxes, the check was accompanied with a letter stating that only half of what I owed was enclosed. I would not pay for a war I found immoral. (The result of my decision is another story.) I simply objected to support a war with my tax dollars when my religion demanded resistance.
Significant numbers of us are morally opposed to capital punishment, so why should we pay that portion of our State and Federal taxes used for executions? Or why should Orthodox Jews pay for non-kosher federal meat inspectors? You see where this is headed? Should we have a line-item veto exercised by any person or religious group which sees a government expense as a violation of their religious faith? Or are we called to swallow, if not to agree, with whatever the Congress or our other elected officials decide is national policy?
I suppose it is perfectly legitimate for those who object to even the tiniest federal expenditure which might go to birth control, to deduct from their tax bill what they figure the cost to them might be. That is, after all, what I did during the Vietnam war. Nevertheless, I had to realize that I was in violation of the law, and that had serious consequences. Come to think of it, Catholic hospitals don’t pay taxes, they just take advantage of tax money other people pay.
As long as we are a nation of laws, we all have a primary obligation to obey them. If we choose not to, which is a perfectly proper moral position, we can do what our consciences call us to do. However, we cannot insist that the whole nation bow to our religious convictions. If we can get the law changed, that is another matter, but we cannot insist that a religious dogma become national policy. If we were under Sharia law that would be another matter. But we are not. No Catholic or employee in a Catholic institution is obliged to use any form of contraception. If a Catholic institution benefits from a Federal program, it cannot deny the rights granted under that law to employees, many of whom are not subject to church doctrine.
Finally, regarding the current debate over contraception, it seems clear from every study that the most significant way to limit abortions is to make contraception as widely available as possible. If their first priority is to be faithful to their church, Catholics shouldn’t engage in sex for any other purpose then to induce pregnancy. But it is the church, not the government, which has the obligation to enforce that edict.
What is happening in the religious world?
For sometime I have been asked to answer a series of questions about where theology is headed and how religion—principally Christianity—is plotting a fresh course. Some of these inquiries come as “gotcha” questions, and for sometime I have refused to dive down into that sort of non-dialogue. But others have been honest efforts to inquire as to where religion is moving. Over the next few weeks I will try and deal with the serious questions that have been raised, realizing that I may be accused of lecturing. I’ll take the risk and try to ignore the rocks, because I take seriously many of the questioners and the issues they raise. Those who continually state that all religion is irrational and superstitious will probably maintain their attacks, but I am not talking to them, nor will I respond. There is no discussion with a closed mind and an angry spirit. My purpose is not to convince anyone or convert anyone, but to shed some light on what is happening in the religious world, both in the academy and throughout the church.
In this initial reply I want to examine why so many find it difficult to accept the fact that theology changes, and thus find it hard even to hear about what is currently going on in religious circles. There are good reasons for this hesitation.
Most members of American churches are steeped in the old style of looking at their faith and the theology behind it. It is an approach which is both arcane and fading. It defies serious thought. It may border on superstition. For them God is still a person, a He, an omnipotent superman in the sky who looks down with both kindness and judgment. The Bible is taken literally. Supernaturalism controls God’s activities and nature. Only their religion is valid. Everyone else is wrong and subject to the hellfire prescribed for unbelievers. Science is an enemy if it contradicts the Bible or church doctrine. Women are second-class. Homosexuals are condemned and ancient tribal laws are honored. And there is more—much more.
When progressives, atheists, agnostics and the “nons” look at Christianity, this is what they see because there is so much of it. Thus they assume that this is what religion really is about. What is more, they are convinced that there is no other way to explain religion, or to talk about God. The mistake they make is holding that religion is exactly what traditional fundamentalists hold. While they reject fundamentalism—as they should—they cannot get by believing that this is all there is on the religious horizon. God is omnipotent, unmovable and unmoved. Religion is written in stone forever. Rejecting fundamentalism but insisting on defining all religion as fundamentalist do is a circular approach which allows no light or no new insight. All serious disciplines would be ground to a halt if that concept were universally accepted. Thankfully intelligent people are always open to what is being discovered and thought. I would not want to encounter a scientist or a physician or industrialist who thought otherwise.
In my next string I’ll try to explain why both religion and anti-religion have arrive at this place. It has to do with what we all assume is the final word about rationality uttered in the Enlightenment, and how is has defined both religion and its critics.
Obviously I have not yet addressed any of the questions, but just suggested why we have come to this impasse.
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